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Comment by mullingitover | Hacker News Reader

If you're working in a startup I hope you'll completely ignore this advice, unless the particular wheel you're reinventing is core to the product/service your startup makes. If it's not, you're likely just setting your runway on fire and crashing the plane before takeoff.

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You are complaining about a symptom of not having enough experienced people onboard. Juniors will make a mess, regardless of if they try to use something existing or reinvent the wheel. Knowing when and what to reinvent is just a function of having worked at more places and for long enough to see what is good and bad with the existing solutions.

I have had to maintain rewritten libraries by seniors. Crappy, buggy and undocumented with no tests.

You still want to build a startup with people that know how to build wheels, and thus have done it professionally, in oss or personal projects.

If you're in a startup and you aren't reinventing some particular wheel, where exactly is your value proposition?

That's why I added the clause:

> unless the particular wheel you're reinventing is core to the product/service your startup makes

If it's core to your product/service, absolutely reinvent the hell out of that wheel. That's your business. Put pneumatic spokes on it. Add a touchscreen. Embed a bespoke LLM. Go nuts.

Just stay focused on your customers. Don't do a bunch of things that are frankly just resume builders for your senior engineers and don't add value for your customers.

I guess it's more like an advice for personal wheels, not professional ones.

I don't find this to be absolutely true.

At our company we reinvented a handful of wheels because the existing solutions were too complex.

And complexity slows you down.

It's not this clear cut.

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